Easter egg (media): History and Key Facts

An Easter egg is a message, image, or feature hidden in software, a video game, a film, or another—usually electronic—medium. The term used in this manner was coined around 1980 by Steve Wright, the then-Director of Software Development in the Atari Consumer Division, to describe a hidden message in the Atari video game Adventure, in reference to an Easter egg hunt.

The earliest known video game Easter egg is in the 1973 video game Moonlander, in which the player tries to land a Lunar module on the Moon; if the player opts to fly the module horizontally through several of the game's screens, they encounter a McDonald's restaurant, and if they land next to it, the astronaut will visit it instead of standing next to the ship. The earliest known Easter egg in software in general is one placed in the "make" command for PDP-6/PDP-10 computers sometime in October 1967–October 1968, where if the user attempts to create a file named "love" by typing "make love", the program responds "not war?" before proceeding.

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